Frankly…

…The Curmudgeon would be one very happy camper if people stopped throwing a superfluous “frankly” into every other sentence they utter. It started with one orange-tinted fool, has become as infectious as chlamydia* in a college dormitory, and is now making many others sound like fools as well.

* The Curmudgeon is convinced that “chlamydia” sounds funnier than “gonorrhea,” which in turn sounds funnier than “syphilis” even though, if you’re going to talk venereal disease, their prevalence is in reverse order. So when he wants to refer to something being infectious he’s usually going to go with chlamydia.

The whole thing reminds him of a panel discussion he watched years ago on PBS – The Curmudgeon is not a fan of PBS and months and months can pass without him seeing anything on it – featuring some of the writers from the old Sid Caesar television show. There were some seriously funny people on this program, including Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H), Mel Tolkin (All in the Family), Carl Reiner, and stealing every scene, of course, Mel Brooks, and they were describing writing a scene in which a character was stepping onto an elevator and telling the operator what floor she wanted. The writers explained that they had a twenty-minute discussion about what floor she should request.

“Twenty?” No. They decided that wasn’t funny.

“Twenty-one?” No. They decided that wasn’t funny.

“Twenty-five?” No. They decided that wasn’t funny.

“Twenty-three?” Now THAT, they decided, was funny.

And that’s how The Curmudgeon feels about chlamydia: decidedly unfunny condition but seriously funny word.